Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39951503›Full record

ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2025

Turbulent mixing controls fixation of growing antagonistic populations.

Jonathan Bauermann, Roberto Benzi, David R Nelson, Suraj Shankar, Federico Toschi

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Turbulent mixing controls fixation of growing antagonistic populations.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors.

Jonathan BauermannDepartment of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.
Roberto BenziSino-Europe Complex Science Center, School of Mathematics, Northwestern University of China, Shanxi 030051, Taiyuan, China.
David R NelsonDepartment of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.ORCID 0000-0002-6541-6643
Suraj ShankarDepartment of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.ORCID 0000-0002-4615-975X
Federico ToschiDepartment of Applied Physics and Science Education, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven 5600 MB, The Netherlands.ORCID 0000-0001-5935-2332

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Unlike coffee and cream that homogenize when stirred, growing micro-organisms (e.g., bacteria, baker's yeast) can actively kill each other and avoid mixing. How do such antagonistic interactions impact the growth and survival of competing strains, while being spatially advected by turbulent flows? By using numerical simulations of a continuum model, we study the dynamics of two antagonistic strains that are dispersed by incompressible turbulent flows in two spatial dimensions. A key parameter is the ratio of the fluid transport time to that of biological reproduction, which determines the winning organism that ultimately takes over the whole population from an initial heterogeneous state, a process known as fixation. By quantifying the probability and mean time for fixation along with the spatial structure of concentration fluctuations, we demonstrate how turbulence raises the threshold for biological nucleation and antagonism suppresses flow-induced mixing by depleting the population at interfaces. Our work highlights the unusual biological consequences of the interplay of turbulent fluid flows with antagonistic population dynamics, with potential implications for marine microbial ecology and origins of biological chirality.

Indexed as

AntibiosisBacteriaModels, BiologicalSaccharomyces cerevisiaeComputer SimulationPopulation Dynamicsantagonismnonreciprocal interactionsspatial population dynamicsturbulent mixing

Identifiers

PMID39951503
PMCPMC11848330

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY-NC-ND
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Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.